Reflections

Well it's 10 days to Xmas, which means there are 16 days left of 2010.....HOW?!

I'm not gonna lie, this has been a good year for me. Odd because I wouldn't have thought it. But I'm back at a healthy weight, enjoying single life ;) and I live with some gorgeous, amazing girlies who make me happy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't believe in perfection. It's an unrealistic illusion that I guess we can aspire to but it's pointless because true perfection will never exist.

I still have days where I don't want to get out of bed. I still have days where I struggle to sit through a meal. I still have days when I think 'what's the bloody point?'

But in amongst all those shit days, I have the days where I sit back and think how lucky I am. Lucky to have a family, who despite the fact they drive me nuts, I wouldn't change for the world. Who I love and will go to the end of the world to protect. I am lucky to be loved by them, and to love them back, with all my heart.

I'm lucky to have such great academic opportunities. I hate doing essays, in fact I should be working right now, but the achievements make me proud. I used to hide behind academia, but now I can see it's just a stepping stone into the future. Despite what I tell myself, I am doing something I love and that for the most part I'm quite good at.

I'm lucky to have such amazing friends. The girls I live with...I couldn't ask for more. I love them so much, they pick me up when I'm down, we have so many laughs and every day we get closer. I love that and I love them.

I've met some great people this year, and stayed in touch with the people I care about from years gone by. I have amazing friends, and if any of you read this, I love you. Hoes over bros any day, but my male friends are equally as awesome as my girls. Thank you all for being a part of my life.

I've never been entirely comfortable with my own identity. In truth I don't really know who I am. All I know is I'm trying to find my way in the world.

For the best part of a year I allowed myself to be defined by the relationship I was in, becoming so absorbed in it that when it ended, I felt like I'd been dropped from dizzying heights to the bottom of the sea. Truth is, I made many mistakes in that relationship, largely depending on it to survive. Without it I didn't really exist. But when that was forced from me, I had to learn to grow into my own person. And I have. I can't, and won't be defined. I am not one particular thing. I'm a daughter and a sister, as well as a friend. These are my most important roles. But none of these particularly express who I am as an individual. I realise that I need to identify me by myself. I am my own person and need to learn to stand on my own two feet. I'll get there one day.

Recently I have been reminded that I am destined to be single. Well at least that's how I feel. I know somewhere I will meet someone I'm meant to be with. It's just I don't deal with rejection very well. Not that I have been rejected exactly. I just don't know where I stand. And to be honest that's almost worse. When your heart hurts for someone, it's all you can think about. I just wish they felt the same.......

October

Well well well a lot seems to have occurred since I last updated this. I wish I could blog more often but, and considering I'm an English student this may come as a bit of a surprise, I usually find myself inspired to write but can't find any words to articulate what I'm trying to say.

Year two of uni has begun and I love it. I live with the most amazing girls and for the first time in my life I feel like I actually belong somewhere. I don't feel like an outcast or an intruder and I haven't ever felt like that before. I love how it feels. I'm enjoying being back in a routine as well. Having to get up for lectures makes things so much easier because once I'm up I know I can face whatever crap life decides to throw my way.

My main news is I've joined the gym! It was a big decision. For those who know me, obviously my past anorexic experiences had to be taken into consideration. I spend my life living on the edge of falling back into very dark place. I eat just enough to maintain my weight, I keep my weight at the lower end of healthy. I do enough to stay well but I've never cured my mental battles. However, thus far the gym seems to have been going well. I'm still eating ok and as yet I haven't become over obsessed with it. I did a body analysis though which was a little traumatic. Everything is healthy. In reality my weight, BMI and body fat are pretty much spot on. But every time I try to reassure myself that this is the truth and that I'm not fat, the anorexic in me suddenly finds her voice again. I try to suppress it as much as I can but it's undeniably there. I just hope I can rely on the strength that has enabled me to stay healthy since leaving hospital 5 years ago to pull me through the days when I want to return to bad habits.

Some of you may question the title of my blog, 'Happiness is just an illusion' It's a lyric for a song and it pretty much sums up my attitude to life. At quite a young age I decided that it isn't actually possible to be truly happy and if there ever was to be a time in my life when I was truly happy I don't think I'd be able to let my walls come down enough to realise and appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, there is much about my life that I absolutely love and wouldn't change for the world. But I am one of those incredibly infuriating people who has an insane need to be constantly worried. I think I will never be able to grasp the fact that there will be times in my life where things are great and I don't need to worry. I don't believe in perfection. The perfect person doesn't exist yet. You can tell me I have an incredibly negative way of approaching life. I don't. I'm a realist. Yes it can be confused with pessimism but if you genuinely know me you'll know I'm not pessimistic. If I was I'd have given up on my life years ago. I believe we're all here for a reason and that our purpose in life is to constantly self-improve and be able to love others the way they love us. If I was a pessimist I wouldn't feel anything. I wouldn't love, and I wouldn't hate. Hate is a nasty emotion but a real one and sometimes healthy. Hate means you care. The day I stop hating is the day I stop caring and the day I stop having a reason to live.

Yesterday I did very little and found myself at a completely loose end. You see I have an overactive brain which needs to be challenged or occupied most of the time or else I start to question things that have been left untouched for a good reason. I find that when I sit at home by myself, I start to self-destruct. I pick apart myself, starting with the obvious; the flaws in what I look like before roughly piercing through the surface and attacking the parts of my personality which I don't particularly like.

I have an overwhelming addiction to magazines which I don't blame for my problems, but acknowledge that they do go a long way to contributing to my issues. Body image is something I will never be comfortable with and reading endless magazines which contain images of celebrities with sizes 0-6 as their dress size doesn't help my state of mind. I am a normal size, but normality doesn't exist in the world of celebrity. These are the images being portrayed to impressionable young girls and it is no wonder that psychological disorders, such as anorexia/bulimia, depression and body dysmorphia are on the rise.

'Don't buy the magazines' I hear you cry and of course that would be a logical answer. However, a solution to my imminent boredom which tackles my creative destruction is to cut up these magazines and create boards of fantasies; hot celebrity men(!), celebrity women who inspire me and clothes I wish I could afford. All of this makes me sound immensely shallow. I'm not...I just take an interest in these things. It does make me sad though, because celebrities are ridiculed for being too fat/too thin. It is our culture which is obsessed with images of perfection that have created this insane image that all women should be stick thin in order to be beautiful and successful. While in the short term this makes it hard to combat my own issues in my head, in the long term it makes me all the more determined to defy this. Someday I will have my own success story. And I don't have to be supermodel thin to achieve it.

Some days you just wake up and appreciate how wonderful life is. Today is one of those days. Last night was the last big night out of the first year of uni and it was brilliant. I felt good about myself (uber rare, trust me!) without getting absolutely trollied. I even had some post-drinking chips without feeling like a hippopotamus. That's a massive achievement. I'm gonna be sad to see the back of Brunei; sure we didn't get on so well to begin with but more than anything that was my fault. I've moved on from being the shy bookworm that I was and I've evolved. True I'll never be as outgoing as some people but the Rachel now is so far removed from the Rachel this time last year and I like me a lot more now. I am my own worst enemy and I always will be but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy myself while I'm learning who I am and who I can be. I have a potentially great job lined up over the summer and I can't wait to get stuck in. The sun is shining, Ian Bell's just got a hundred and I'm happier than I've been for a very, very long time.

10 things.....

1. I'm a Taurus, which means I'm as stubborn as hell and have a real jealous streak, but I have a big heart and don't give up easily.

2. I have two wonderful parents, a truly brilliant sister (even if she doesn't realise it) and a huge extended family....guess that's what comes when your Dad is one of 11 children!

3. I love reading; books, magazines, letters, anything that stimulates my mind and gets me thinking.

4. If there were only 3 foods in the world and I could choose them, they would be cereal, bread and marmite. :)

5. I want to move to New York. Like now. My perfect life would have a real 'Sex and the City' feel to it, I don't care how shallow that sounds, it's my dream, let me live it.

6. I believe I was born to be a mother. It's the only thing I've ever truly wanted to do, I can't promise I'll be an amazing mum but I can promise endless love and a genuine attempt to do my best.

7. I love music and musicals.....I've seen Wicked twice and would happily see it again and again. I would give anything to see the Lion King.

8. Cricket is my life; I got into it at the age of 10 and I absolutely love it. England winning the Ashes in 2005 will always and forever be ingrained in my memory; that series got me through a very, very difficult time in my life.

9. I love caffeine. I'm not really supposed to drink it, but I can't live without tea, coffee and diet coke.

10. I have some amazing friends and at times I don't deserve them. But sometimes fate strikes us a piece of fortune and we have to grab onto it. Be nice to your friends, they're the ones you're going to need when your world falls apart.

Basically I talk a lot. I talk too much. But I hope that some of what I say is constructive. I don't let that many people into my life and here is a little insight into the padlock I call my diary in my head. If you want to know more, get me drunk, I'm much more open then!!!! :D

p.s. I am joking, getting me drunk is not a good idea. But talking to me is, I'm not so bad when you get to know me!

SUNSHINE! :D

Today is May 22nd, it is officially the hottest day of the year to date, summer may well be on the horizon and it's about time! The world looks so much better when it's sunny, the skies are a beautiful shade of blue and everything moves along at a much calmer, less frantic pace than it usually does. But it's times like these that scare me. Not the sun, God help me if I was scared of the sun. Summer makes me dream a lot, not necessarily at night, but I think about where I'm going with my life, where and who I want to be. It does scare me, I fear not fulfilling my dreams but more than anything it excites me. My first year at uni is drawing to a close, and while I'll be sad to see the back of my year as a fresher, I look over it with a great deal of pride; I've achieved a lot this year, I know I made a bad start, and dealt with a lot of things pretty badly, but I've picked it up....I've done things way out of my comfort zone and I've made some truly fantastic friends. I do love uni, I love the course and I love the fact that it gives me a gateway to what I've always dreamed of....a future. There will always be things that stand in the way of your dreams, but you have to learn which dreams are worth fighting for, the ones you'll be prepared to go the extra mile for. Those are the ones that will make you. They may break you at times but if you fight for them, if you really, truly believe in them, they will be the ones that leave you standing on top of the mountain rather than falling over the edge of the cliff.

Now stop reading this and go and enjoy the sun! :) xxxxxx